{"id":465296,"date":"2026-02-13T01:45:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T01:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/465296\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T01:45:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T01:45:07","slug":"a24s-next-big-bet-is-on-unscripted-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/465296\/","title":{"rendered":"A24\u2019s Next Big Bet Is On Unscripted Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDanny Smiechowski, a 73-year old triathlete, likes to ride his exercise bike in full view of his San Diego community. The problem? His tiny, yellow mankini is upsetting the neighbors<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat you\u2019re doing is an affront to God,\u201d says one local, while another group drive past yelling, \u201cPut your junk away, Grandpa.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSmiechowski is one of the standout subjects of HBO<\/a> domicile dispute docuseries Neighbors, which launches on Friday.<\/p>\n

\n\tNeighbors is also the first unscripted series to emerge from A24<\/a>, the hipster film and TV studio that is behind films such as Marty Supreme, Materialists and Uncut Gems and scripted series Euphoria and Beef.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat makes it an A24-style show? Well, it\u2019s hard to explain, but it just feels like an A24 show. There are signs throughout; the fact that Bruce and Darrell Blasius, who are feuding with their Kokomo, IN neighbor over a farm he\u2019s installed next door, have an indoor jacuzzi is one of the first giveaways.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s also exec produced by Josh Safdie, who has become one of A24\u2019s kingmakers, given that his nine-time Oscar-nominated<\/a> Marty Supreme recently became its highest-grossing worldwide release <\/a>of all time.<\/p>\n

\n\tNeighbors is the perfect calling card for the enigmatic company that rarely talks publicly and does things a little differently.<\/p>\n

\n\tA24 has leaned into the auteur of it all and Neighbors is no different. It comes from nascent filmmakers Harrison Fishman and Dylan Redford (grandson of Robert).<\/p>\n

\n\tNeighbors shares a cinematic style with esoteric filmmakers such as The History of Concrete\u2019s John Wilson, and Lance Oppenheim, who is behind docs such as Some Kind of Heaven and Ren Faire. In fact, Neighbors also shares a casting executive with Wilson; Harleigh Shaw worked on his HBO series How to With John Wilson as well as such A24 films as The Smashing Machine and Charli XCX\u2019s The Moment.<\/p>\n

\n\tFishman and Redford first became obsessed with online videos of people in conflict, and Harrison\u2019s brother Sam started sharing neighbor-to-neighbor fight videos from around the country. This led to a road trip around America to \u201ccapture something bigger and messier than what already existed on TikTok.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOther quarrels in the series include a fight in Florida over a private beach, a TikTok star and a conspiracy theorist battling over a fence in rural Montana, and a former Texas senator in a dispute over an 8-foot concrete wall outside her \u201ccartel-looking\u201d residence.<\/p>\n

\n\tNeighbors is one of a number of unscripted projects A24 has in the works.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt is currently developing a reality cooking competition based on the video game Overcooked<\/a> for Netflix<\/a>. That project is said to be in the vein of Nailed It! or Floor Is Lava.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis was a more surprising development for A24.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019d be easy to see the company make a docuseries set in the same world as the Adam Sandler-led crime thriller Uncut Gems (although admittedly that film already features a lot of real people) or a fake game show hosted by I Think You Should Leave\u2019s Tim Robinson (who also starred in A24\u2019s Friendship).<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the suggestion internally at A24 is that Overcooked will have somewhat of a twist from traditional cooking shows like MasterChef and Hell\u2019s Kitchen, even if it also could have sat alongside those shows on a traditional linear broadcast network.<\/p>\n

\n\tDeadline understands that the company has held talks with the likes of ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC, which are still the biggest buyers of unscripted, and is keen to find an entertainment format that works for broadcast as well as streaming and premium cable. <\/p>\n

\n\tThis drive is being led by A24\u2019s Head of Unscripted Jonathan Hausfater, who has worked on network shows such as ABC\u2019s Holey Moley and CBS\u2019 Undercover Boss, as well as Netflix shows such as Tidying Up With Marie Kondo. Hausfater has been working closely with A24\u2019s head of global television Ravi Nandan since joining three years ago. <\/p>\n

\n\tDeadline understands that A24\u2019s slate includes unscripted developments across docuseries, competition series, ensemble reality shows and sports.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe company is clearly trying to come at things from a different angle. This is nothing new in the world of unscripted television.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe early days of reality television in the U.S. may have yielded shows such as Survivor and American Idol, but they also brought a range of weird and wonderful projects such as plastic surgery-adjacent competition The Swan, fake Prince Harry dating format I Wanna Marry Harry, TLC\u2019s Best Funeral Ever, and Lord of the Flies-esque Kid Nation.<\/p>\n

\n\tMore recently, Fox\u2019s The Masked Singer, based on the wacky Korean format, and TLC\u2019s MILF Manor have shared some of this Wild West DNA.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs such, is there any reason the company that made Everything Everywhere All at Once, a parallel universe comedy set in an IRS office, couldn\u2019t successfully break into this sector?<\/p>\n

\n\tOne could imagine A24 being behind an ensemble reality series in the vein of Pretty Wild, the E! show that kicked off with star Alexis Neiers being arrested for her role in The Bling Ring burglaries; a fashion dating show set in the world of the How Long Gone podcast; or even find an Asian entertainment format that is even weirder than The Masked Singer.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe idea of Bravo\u2019s next Real Housewives-style reality series or 2026\u2019s version of MTV\u2019s The Hills coming out of the same studio that made hunky biker dom-com Pillion or metaphysical maternal madness movie If I Had Legs I\u2019d Kick You is fascinating.<\/p>\n

\n\tNetworks and streamers have long been calling out for something \u201crisky,\u201d \u201cunique\u201d or \u201cbrash.\u201d The question is now how risky do they actually want to be?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Danny Smiechowski, a 73-year old triathlete, likes to ride his exercise bike in full view of his San…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465297,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[17979,88,1035,36255,216625,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-465296","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-a24","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-hbo","11":"tag-neighbors","12":"tag-overcooked","13":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}